


Home Isn't Pretty

by htebazytook



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Demon Dean, First Time, M/M, Porn, Post-Season/Series 09, Season/Series 09 Spoilers, Slash, Smut, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:26:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2237382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htebazytook/pseuds/htebazytook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Demonic life suits Dean well, until it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Isn't Pretty

**Title:** Home Isn't Pretty  
 **Author:** htebazytook  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Warnings:** none  
 **Disclaimer:** *disclaims*  
 **Pairing:** Dean/Castiel  
 **Time Frame:** post season 9  
 **Summary:** Demonic life suits Dean well, until it doesn't.

 

Dean doesn't open his eyes right away. He's trying to pinpoint what he's hearing – the clink of glass, the rush of waves and wind.

"Hello, what's this? Is the sleeping beauty stirring in his slumber at last?"

There's a clear sky above him, which Dean instantly hates. He hears Crowley take a drink and set a glass down. When Dean sits up in his deckchair to face him – 

Above the neat black suit and tie Crowley's face is a mangled, rotten parody of itself, the missing chunks of skin making Crowley's grin even worse than usual. There's too much stimuli to make sense of – hot sun and sea breeze and Crowley looking both like and unlike himself.

Crowley tilts his head, red eyes managing a twinkle. "Somehow I never get tired of it. Seeing the clunky cogs of common sense turn in that oafish Winchester brain."

"Okay uh . . . the last time I could see, you know, _that_ , demons' true faces or whatever, I was going to Hell, so . . . am I going to Hell?"

Crowley laughs. "Look around, Dean. You're onboard the 5th circle's finest ocean liner. Nothing but blue skies and the souls of the wrathful entangled in eternal strife beneath the water's surface. Sometimes they get close enough to ride the bow wave. You know, like dolphins. Bit bloodier and more zombie-ish than dolphins, granted, but the same principle applies."

The sky behind Crowley's horrible face is the most perfect blue, and as Dean starts to pay attention to his surroundings he can hear screams coming from the water below them. The ship is pristine and empty. Crowley's elaborate orange cocktail is the most colorful thing onboard and Dean just hates it, _really_ hates it. Hates Crowley, but that's nothing new. Hates the color of the sky and hates the screams. 

It's not an unstable kind of anger. On the contrary, letting himself relish in it only leaves a cool satisfaction in its wake. It feels more consequence-free than anything good has ever felt. 

"I'm a . . . "

"Demon, yeah. Let it go, Dean, I know the wrath never bothered you anyway."

Dean glares.

Crowley laughs. "Cheer up. It's not so bad. I've given the place quite the makeover since your last infernal holiday. And you and me? We've got the best seat in the house." He clinks his flutey glass against the bottle of El Sol that's appeared in Dean's hand. "Here's to us."

Dean isn't thirsty. He watches Crowley drink, listens to shrieks and seagulls.

*

Dean doesn't knock on the door to the rusty mobile home on the edge of town. He kicks it in, stares down the pair of demons in the badly lit kitchenette. 

"Have you heard the good news?" Dean asks quietly. 

A demon with an elaborately horned face and scuffed up Timberlands snorts. "Who the hell are you supposed to be?" she says.

Dean seizes her friend by his neck and holds the first blade up to it, already dizzy with the promise of blood. He knows he'll kill him no matter how this goes, fuck Crowley's rules. "I _said_ ," Dean simpers, "have you heard who's back in black, Downstairs?"

Her approximate eyes widen. "Crowley."

"Knew you'd get there eventually. And you'll both be answering to him now, right? You and the rest of your little faction who spent the last year licking Abaddon's boots."

"Oh – oh, of course."

"So I don't have to worry about stopping in again? About you guys up and committing treason just 'cause a popular kid pays attention to you? You know, _again_?"

"No!" the guy Dean is slowly throttling gurgles. "We'll serve the king, always have, we were just - "

Dean looks at him, doesn't really see the human vessel as he slices through his throat, doesn't really hear the other demon's shout and hasty smoke out. He leans against a mini fridge and closes his eyes, so fucking high on the rush. Finally free of the pressure to fit every little thing into his own moral code or Dad's or Sam's or Bobby's.

*

"Let's face it, squirrel," Crowley says. "I'm a bit too human and you're _quite_ a bit too demonic – together, we make the perfect team."

"Except something tells me this ain't an equal partnership."

"Well . . . I've got a bit more know-how in the whole 'being damned' arena, it's true, so for the time being maybe I ought to take the lead, eh? 'Til you've enough merit badges to make demon scout."

Helping Crowley is the best way to learn how Hell is run, which Dean needs to know inside out before he can even think of overthrowing him. He doesn't want to do it so he can fill Hell up with rainbows and kittens or seal it off from the Earth or whatever. He just wants that power because apart from the killing there's nothing else to want.

*

"Rise and shine," Dean yells into one of Abbadon's favorite lieutenants' ears.

The demon jumps out of bed and flings Dean into a bookshelf. Dean fakes being dazed and stabs him through the gut once he's close enough. His smoldering remains and the acrid stench of death in the air feel so immediate and strong that Dean just slumps to the floor and revels in it all. He can identify the momentum behind the feeling as guilt and terror and a thousand regrets that _this_ demon wasn't Yellow Eyes just five minutes before his mother had walked in, but it doesn't feel like any of that, that was just the fuel, long since converted into whatever was driving him these days. He doesn't have to worry about willing negative feelings away now because they don't feel negative anymore.

Dean's spent his whole life pretending he doesn't feel and pushing down whatever manages to escape to the surface. He inhales deeply now, drops of blood trickling down the blade between his fingers, and feels more at peace than he's ever felt.

*

Dean's vision isn't much different, as a demon, apart from being able to see other demons' faces. The way he views the world, familiar towns and sights and seasons, is physically unchanged, though now it all seems too weak and fleeting for his consideration. So the expensive hotel suite Crowley had insisted on in Atlanta doesn't fill Dean with much disgust at the opulence. It just feels impermanent and pointless.

Crowley drinks scotch in a leather chair, talking to somebody Downstairs with the blood of an unlucky bellboy in an extra tumbler.

Dean doesn't need to busy himself with sharpening knives or packing salt rounds, anymore. He sits and watches Crowley and waits, not thinking about anything, just noticing the sounds and smells and colors of the too-big room - 

There's a humming sound like the A/C switching on but more resonant. Weird whispered words that seem made up but make Dean shiver.

Crowley stops speaking into the tumbler and looks up. "Oh bollocks."

"What?" Dean feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The sound gets louder and louder. Then there's a blinding light and the room is about 20 degrees hotter. " _What is it?_ "

"Come crawling back again?" Crowley drawls. Dean can only see a shadowy outline of him in the shifting brightness of the room. "Not looking to strike another deal, are we?"

It's hard to hear over the all-pervading humming, hard to see much of anything until a fiery silhouette pushes nearer to Dean. "Dean? It can't . . . " The voice is familiar but deep on a different level than Dean has experienced it before. "But I can't see you."

"Cas?"

"You were dead." Cas's wings aren't visible to Dean but the space they presumably occupy is like a mirage in the air, cut off by walls and chandeliered ceilings. Cas himself is all but obscured by white and blue flames.

Dean blinks rapidly because he doesn't feel calm or good or emotionless, now. "Yeah, still am, technically."

Crowley clears his throat. "Can we save the Buffy/Angel moment for later? To what do we owe the pleasure, Castiel?"

"I followed the omens," Cas says vaguely, not turning away from Dean. "You were not very discreet . . . "

"So what," Dean scoffs, "you're a hunter now?"

Cas inches back the slightest bit, flickering blue swirls of eyes only abandoning their study of Dean's face reluctantly before addressing Crowley again. "There are very few hunters left."

And something about the way Cas accepts it all so quickly strikes a chord with Dean. He grabs Cas's arm and turns him, and the action makes that first sharp stab of irritation dissolve into satisfaction. "So the angels just worked things out in heaven?"

Cas observes Dean's unrelenting grip but does nothing. "I never desired to lead. I have always been of better use on Earth."

"So you gonna smite yours truly and the King of Hell in all his douchey glory, Cas? Is that seriously your plan?"

Cas peers into him, past Dean's visage to whatever Dean has where his soul should be – Dean's always hated that look because the things that lurked inside had been blackened long before his eyes.

Cas blinks out of existence. Dean can see the echo of him in the room, fading from vibrating light into dull earthly objects again.

*

It's like being drunk. There's this layer of live-wire contempt between Dean and the rest of the world, and even though Dean can see beyond it the impulses are just too strong and too gratifying not to give in to.

Dean can't get drunk for real, anymore, but he downs his fifth or fifteenth whisky because the taste is still relaxing.

"You might wanna take it easy there," the woman with the whatever-tini two stools over says, smirking when she catches Dean's eye. It's so easy to peer into her mind. She's in debt. Student loans (law school),credit cards, a mortgage piling up, and medical bills. She feels so trapped she might just do anything fix it. 

Dean smiles for reasons that feel the same as the reasons he used to smile around a flirty chick at a dark glossy bar. He wants her, yeah, but he wants her soul. Wants her lovely lavender-lidded eyes heavy with betrayal and resignation when he presses where she's weakest until she gives in to him.

*

Three more deals in a single night in Billings. Old geezer desperate to save his wife, dumb high school senior desperate for an acceptance letter, a girl who just wanted to disappear. They were all fucking putty in his hands.

Dean never drives anymore. The classic cars that pass him when he's hitchhiking are like an ice cream flavor you loved as a kid that you can't eat without puking anymore, too sweet and too much to stomach. When they stop for him he takes an extra pleasure in the resulting blood all over their worn interiors.

He appears at the entrance to a bar with dingy vinyl siding, drinks for hours and thinks blissfully about nothing. Songs he knows too well play like a joke in the background - _Ride On_ , _Gimme Back My Bullets_ \- and their familiarity is still soothing somewhere in Dean's hindbrain. He doesn't care if it's too human. He doesn't worry anymore about what makes him feel good.

*

One minute Dean is tuning out Crowley's latest State of the Damned address in a lava-drenched stadium filled with cowering demons and ringed by (literally) giant bouncers, the next he's in a cheap motel room. Leaden afternoon light beating against thick closed curtains, wood panels the way they always were.

"Hello, Dean." He can see Cas better this time, though he's still glowing residually around the edges. His voice reverberates but much less powerfully. 

"Hey." It occurs to Dean that Cas chose cheap motel rooms because that's all he's ever seen Dean do. Dean doesn't know how much of Cas's personality is conscious choice and how much is still just following orders from whoever happened to be around. "Your grace, is it . . . ?"

Cas sighs. "Fading, yes. I'm aware." He looks so much more human now, not that Cas had ever been completely human to Dean even when he'd lost his grace entirely. Dean can see his face better, stubble and the shades of skin tones, though he's still flickering confusingly in a way that seems to move the air. Eyes less neon and more their usual deep blue like the sky an hour after sunset. "You haven't seen Sam."

Dean is caught off guard by the jolt of regret that hits him, wishes he knew how he'd been avoiding it before. "What would the point of that be? He'd just try to fix this." Dean doesn't want that, at all.

"He deserves to know."

Dean says the kind of words he knows he would've said as a human: "He deserves to be spared from knowing, for once. Cas - " Dean steps toward him but hits something, squints down at the rust-brown carpet. "What the . . . oh _come on_ , a devil's trap, seriously?"

"A precaution." Cas watches Dean without pity or revulsion, but Dean still can't read his mind even in his weakened state and the numbness on his face is frustratingly opaque.

"So you got a Gorn you want me to fight while you've got me under surveillance?"

Cas frowns. "The radius of this devil's trap is only four feet. It doesn't contain the necessary ingredients for gunpowder, or hand to hand combat."

Dean grins. "Only you could get pop culture references and still be a dork about it. Well, you're better than the other angels anyway."

Cas doesn't smile back.

Dean can't tolerate the tension, not when he'd been so free of it for so many months. "Why did you summon me? Don't get me wrong, it's a nice enough piece of shit motel, but this ain't the garden of Eden."

"There ain't no angels above." Cas says it more seriously than a song lyric really warrants. He starts pacing, new trenchcoat brushing against the covers on one of the low narrow beds and Dean hates the tiny ways in which it's different from his old trenchcoat. "It is not the same in Heaven, it never has been since . . . "

"You drew the short straw and got stuck dragging my ass out of Hell? The first time, that is."

Cas is a terrible liar when he's caught off guard. Dean can see the confirmation of it all over his spot-lit face. "I don't know where I belong, anymore. I wonder if I ever did belong anywhere."

"So where do I come into this?" Dean sounds dismissive, but he wants to stay in this devil's trap talking in circles with Cas more quietly and simply than he's wanted blood and souls and power, lately.

Cas watches the obligatory artwork on the far wall and replies, "I want to make a deal." 

"What do you mean?"

"I want," Cas says, getting closer, "to make a deal for you." Dean being unable to step forward makes Cas's every movement feel immediate.

"You mean with me."

"I mean both. Take my soul in exchange for yours becoming human again. I don't need a grace period, the last several years have been enough of one."

"I'm a little new to the whole crossroads deal thing, Cas, but I'm pretty sure Hell isn't dealing in angel souls."

"I'm not quite an angel anymore, Dean."

"Yeah, but you're not quite a human either."

Cas's smile is wan. "Like I said, I don't belong anywhere."

Dean blinks against the volatile rumble of emotions surging up from somewhere he never let himself acknowledge, notions and memories and impulses all too sweet or too grim for him to deal with. Where did Dean go wrong that Cas had ended up feeling as useless as Dean always had? He'd always known he was contagious.

"I need you," Cas says, impossibly wide eyed, "to be okay." 

"You - " Dean catches up, laughs humorously. "Why? There's other humans you could've latched onto, you know. Don't put it all on me like you always do, _Castiel_ , 'cause I don't have to do jack shit just because _you_ need it. I'm done with that selfless, self-sacrificial bullshit."

"Dean - "

"Get yourself another fucking excuse."

Cas steps closer, over the paint matted carpet and into Dean's personal space like he used to. Hot hand on Dean's jaw and his face is too bright so Dean shuts his eyes. It works out well because the feeling of Cas's lips would've forced them closed anyway - soft, and insistent. Dean doesn't pull away. Cas keeps kissing him and Dean starts kissing back, dizzy with the keen little notes of desire that thrum his every nerve ending.

"I never said we had a deal," Dean pants as soon as his mouth is free. Cas's roams over his face and down his neck leaving hot breath and vague kisses in its wake.

"I realize that." Cas waves a hand to break through the devil's trap and Dean can see his eyes fade further into humanity for a moment before regaining their glowy sheen. Cas pushes Dean to sit on the bed, straddles him so efficiently it makes Dean wonder why it hadn't happened before.

Cas is kissing him more demandingly now so Dean holds his head still with a fistful of hair and licks into his mouth, sucks on Cas's tongue and swallows Cas's groan and immediate reciprocation. Dean's hand slides possessively down Cas's neck, shoulders, clutches Cas's coat when Cas bites into Dean's bottom lip. Keeps Cas's hips still so he can grind up into them.

Cas is just as eager, head tilting back and hips moving in tandem, " _Dean_ ," falling from his beautiful bruised mouth.

That brief syllable makes Dean remember things about Cas – words and worry and too-long glances. Bittersweet like the unwelcome nostalgia of something you used to miss but have long since seen the ugly truth in.

The attraction is less complicated. Easy and strong and he doesn't even think about the reasons for it or excuse it away this time, just bites at Cas's neck and feels Cas's moans vibrating against his lips, sucks at the juncture of neck and shoulder while loosening Cas's tie and starting to unbutton his shirt.

Cas ducks to capture Dean's mouth in a kiss again, softer, with fingertips tracing over Dean's face like he's memorizing it. The tone of the action is pungent in a way more deeply penetrating than the lust.

Dean wants skin, wants _heat_. Untucks Cas's shirt and slides his hands up underneath to feel his chest, eliciting a shiver and Cas's eyes going wide when he thumbs over a nipple. Dean jerks Cas closer by his tie but doesn't kiss him, just presses their foreheads together while he teases him and Cas pants and fists his hands in Dean's shirt.

Cas tires of it eventually, fucking _growls_ before shoving Dean onto his back. Leans over Dean to pin his arms.

"Cas," Dean whines, writhes. "Come on."

Cas is already on him, mouthing Dean's neck and over his shirt and down until he's nuzzling against Dean's erection through his jeans. 

"Fuck, Cas . . . "

He pulls Dean's shoes off, then his jeans, leans up and licks up the outline of Dean's cock through his boxers before getting those off too. 

Cas nuzzles Dean's hipbone and leaves sloppy kisses up the length of his cock before licking against the slit maddeningly. Dean's fingers twist into his hair but Cas is having none of it, slams Dean's hands down into the mattress and looks up at Dean through gorgeous lashes under wrecked dark hair, says, "Take the rest of your clothes off."

Dean hurries to obey. Feels Cas's mouth closing hotly around his cock while his shirt's over his head. When he can see again Cas's lips are stretched around him obscenely. 

Cas glances up at Dean, then moves back to ask, "Does this feel good?"

"Yes, oh my God yes . . . " So pure and overwhelmingly good. "Don't stop."

Cas doesn't stop. He sucks hard and takes him so fucking deep that Dean can hardly breathe. He swipes his tongue along the underside and curls it around the head just before swallowing Dean's cock again. 

After awhile Cas's mouth meanders up Dean's torso until Cas is naked in his lap. Dean doesn't worry about when Cas's clothes had disappeared, just pulls him into a kiss because he's been magnetized to the mere idea of him for too long to stop himself right now. Dean tastes himself on Cas's tongue, moans and grinds up into Cas so that their cocks bump against each other clumsily.

Dean flips them over, pins Cas to the squeaky motel mattress and bites his gorgeous bottom lip before licking into his mouth again. Cas grabs Dean's hand and drags it between his legs, muttering incoherent pleas against his jaw as Dean starts stroking him.

Cas clutches at Dean painfully, bony arm and too tight grip and fingernails digging into skin but it only feeds Dean's arousal. Dean can feel Cas's cock twitching in his hand, so close now and that power courses thrillingly through Dean's veins. 

Cas comes silently, shaking and panting and smiling a dazed smile that stabs ruthlessly into Dean's memory forever. Heavy blue glance at Dean and a dirty little smirk before he shoves Dean onto his back.

Dean doesn't keep his balance. He topples inelegantly off the side of the bed and doesn't even have time to curse because Cas leans over the edge after him, reaches down to jerk Dean off and kisses him at a weird angle from above.

Dean runs his fingers through Cas's sweaty hair obsessively, drunk with the smell of sweat and sex and Cas and the piercing pleasure he's now pulling out of him.

"You feel so good," Dean gasps, leaning his forehead against Cas's and catching the sheets draped over the side of the bed in a death grip. "So good, so good . . . "

Dean's elbows hurt from propping himself up on the floor. His arm is strained because he's got to keep touching Cas's hair while they kiss. His mouth is abused from the kissing and it's perfect. He wants to be smothered by Cas in every sense of the word, wants to forget everything that's past and that's passed between them, just wants to live exactly here and feel exactly this. 

Dean doesn't remember coming. He emerges from a post-orgasmic stupor to find himself still on the floor. Cas lies sumptuously on his side on the bed above him, watching Dean with such wretched eyes.

"So," Cas says, even more hoarse than usual. "About that deal."

Dean has to swallow. He feels Cas's hopelessness like a physical blow and he doesn't know how to regain the relief of detachment he'd become accustomed to.

"I told you," Dean says. "I don't deal with angels." 

Cas nods. "I'll find another demon who will."

"No, you won't. It's not allowed." Dean has no idea about that, but maybe if he says it enough Cas will believe him. He'll make _sure_ that nobody deals with him even if it means pissing Crowley off. 

Cas only watches Dean. It lasts what would normally constitute an uncomfortably long time but those days are gone. Eventually Cas puts his clothes back on and heads for the door. Dean sees it all happening without knowing what to say or do or feel.

"I'll see you around," Cas says, sounding uncertain, before he leaves.

*


End file.
